Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the provision of user interface resources in a collaborative input system in which the user interface is controlled via a plurality of inputs. The invention is particularly, but not exclusively, concerned with an interactive display system, such as a system incorporating a touch sensitive interactive surface, which in use may be presented in a horizontal or vertical arrangement, and is particularly but not exclusively concerned with such surfaces being provided with touch inputs from a plurality of different sources.
Description of the Related Art
Interactive surfaces which are adapted to detect touch inputs are well-known in the art. Such an interactive surface may be arranged to have a display to display graphical information and/or images to a user. A user is able to touch the surface at a position at which an object is displayed in order to select the object, or move the touch contact across the surface in order to move the object. Similarly a touch contact may be used to draw or annotate on the display of the touch surface.
Various applications for such touch sensitive surfaces are well-known in the art, such as in handheld electronic devices such as mobile phones or personal data assistants (PDAs). On a larger scale, such touch surfaces are also known as part of interactive display systems, such as electronic whiteboards. More recently, touch sensitive display surfaces have been shown as being used for interactive tables, where the display surface is disposed in a horizontal plane as a table surface.
It is also known in the art of touch sensitive display surfaces to include such surfaces in a collaborative input system, to allow for multiple users to interact with the touch sensitive display simultaneously. In practice multiple inputs can be received from a single user, as well as from a plurality of users. The interactive touch sensitive surface is adapted to be responsive to touch inputs in general, and thus is responsive to a plurality of touch inputs.
One problem with systems in which multiple inputs are received from multiple users is allocating resources to users using a common application.
Software applications that expose a graphical user interface (GUI) are designed to be interacted with via a single input source, such as a mouse input. When a user has to select one tool from a range of mutually exclusive tools on a toolbar, it is therefore sufficient to show one of the tools in a highlighted or selected state within the GUI, with all other tools being shown in a non-highlighted or non-selected state.
It is also known in the art for computer systems to receive inputs from multiple input sources. For example a keyboard and a mouse may be considered as two separate input sources. In more sophisticated systems, multiple mouse devices may be provided, each mouse device constituting a separate input source.
Moreover, in the field of interactive systems having interactive display surfaces, particularly such interactive systems incorporated within systems such as electronic whiteboards, it has been proposed to allow for the processing of multiple detected inputs at the interactive surface. In a more recent development, it is proposed to allow for the detection of multiple inputs at an interactive surface, which inputs are detected using different types of input detection technology. It is known in the art to provide interactive surfaces which are touch-sensitive, and to provide interactive surfaces which are adapted to detect the presence of a specially adapted pen (such as by electromagnetic means). In a proposal for an interactive surface in an electronic whiteboard application, the interactive surface is adapted to detect touch inputs and pen inputs. Each input type may be considered a distinct input source.
In the proposals for an interactive surface of an interactive display system it is further proposed for each input type, i.e. pen or touch, to be able to select a different tool within an application running on the computer system.
Moreover, it is desirable that even different input sources of the same type may be able to select different tools and control an application in different ways. For example an interactive system may be able to distinguish between inputs from two different pens, based on different operating frequencies of the pens.
In order to address this problem, it has been proposed by Promethean Limited to provide each identifiable pen with a toolbox specific to that pen. Thus the tool currently associated with a specific pen is highlighted within a pen-specific toolbox.
Whilst this solution has particular advantages in certain applications, it requires software applications configured for single-input applications to be specially adapted, and also means that less of the display area is available for use by the software application, the presence of multiple toolboxes for each input source consuming the usable display area. For this reason, in certain applications it would be advantageous to maintain a shared toolbox for multiple input sources, rather than provide each input source with a separate toolbox.
A problem then arises in the prior art, in that known GUIs are implemented with toolbars which are adapted to allow selection and highlighting of one tool at a time. When utilised in a multi-input environment, a shared toolbox allows only for the same function to be allocated to all inputs. When one input is used to select a function in the shared toolbox, all inputs then have that function. Thus a function must be selected (or reselected) each time an input is used, to ensure a desired functionality is always associated with the input when it is used.
In another solution Promethean Limited have provided an improvement in a computer system associated with a display for receiving control inputs from a plurality of input sources, and adapted to display a shared control panel for the plurality of input sources, the shared control panel being associated with an application running on the computer system.
It is an aim of the invention to provide an improvement in a collaborative input system in which each of a plurality of inputs, preferably at an interactive surface, is able to select one or more tools displayed on a user interface.
It is an aim to provide an improvement in a collaborative input system in which a user interface is controlled via a plurality of inputs, preferably at an interactive surface.